


Lovers in Basra

by sandarenu



Category: Sinbad (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-31
Updated: 2013-10-31
Packaged: 2017-12-31 00:51:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,904
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1025391
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sandarenu/pseuds/sandarenu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When the Providence finally sails back to Basra, Sinbad runs into an old friend.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lovers in Basra

**Author's Note:**

> I’m really new at writing fanfic so if someone ever reads this, I hope you enjoy it. It's also been a while since I watched the show so if there are any inaccuracies, I hope they aren't glaring and distracting.

It is a very exhausted crew on board the Providence that sighs in relief when the ship finally anchors home in Basra, twenty-two days after the Land of the Dead left them all chilled to the bone. Sinbad has a small, sad smile on his face as he surveys the mosques and flat buildings that make up the skyline of the city of his childhood and youth. Sad as he feels, he still manages to bark out a laugh when Rina jumps out of the ship in glee, shouting “Finally! A tankard of mead that isn’t stale!”

Anwar pats him on the back as he passes by. He has the air of a man who will be busy in the next few days, and doesn’t look too sentimental. He and Cook unload a large pot that Cook wants to take to the markets to fill up with fresh produce and spices.

Basra has changed back to its old ways since they last saw her. She is tenacious, as are her people, and to Sinbad she has re-organized into the hot, humid pile of city it was before her Lord went mad with grief for his son.

Sinbad gives himself time to meander through the streets he ran across as a little boy. At sunset on that first day back on land he walks to the small dwelling he’d grown up in. A different family, a distraught mother with a newborn teething on her, now occupies it. She shuts the door in his face before he gets a word in edgewise. He walks back to the ship for the night and is unsurprised to see Anwar, Rina, Gunnar and Tiger huddled around Cook as he passes them a bowl of what he calls his best cooking in months.

“It’s strange,” Rina says a bit sleepily (Sinbad guesses it’s from the mead she missed so much), “you think you’re missing life on land until you get here and you realize it’s a pain in the arse to deal with actual people.”

Anwar laughs at that a bit too bitterly.

Sinbad walks through the markets the next morning. His senses tingle with the wafts of cinnamon and mint against a warming sun. The nostalgia almost drowns him.

He sees her a second before she sees him, almost exactly where he first saw her that fateful day years ago.

“Nala!” he cries out, his smile wide for the first time in weeks. She turns around in a tingle of jewellery.

She looks utterly gobsmacked to see him, as if she can’t believe he’s here, and then she too smiles widely and runs to Sinbad.

“Sinbad!” she replies, her arms reaching out to give him a hug. A few elderly men around them frown at the public display of affection, but she looks at them amusedly, touching Sinbad’s cheek with a gentle hand.

“Gods! How have you been? When did you get here?” She asks.

“We anchored the ship just yesterday.”

She sees something on his face that he can’t hide, and somehow understands.

“Tell me everything”.

“It has been an interesting journey since you left, I can tell you that,” he concedes, the sad smile occupying his face again.

He finds it difficult to look up at her eyes, and settles for noting the finery she is wearing, as usual. A green silk dress and ruby red beads, a fine scarf securing her long hair to her head. Nala seems utterly unaffected by the dust and the heat of the market place. She looks like a goddess amongst mortals, and Sinbad feels threadbare and worn out in his own attire, in his skin, standing next to her and under the scrutiny of her gaze.

 

Nala leads him to a small house on a side street, and at his inquiring gaze she smiles softly and says, “I share this with a few midwives. I’m paying them so that they may better look after the less fortunate women in the city when they give birth. You wouldn’t believe how many of these poor souls suffer in a city so rich. It’s shameful. I wanted to do something about it.”

“I admire you” Sinbad says, “You’re saving lives, helping people. We should have you running this city”.

“An Egyptian running this city? Sinbad, you’re funny. But thank you.”

Her room isn’t as extravagant and regal as Sinbad expects.

Noticing his little scoff, she smiles at him.

“I’m not a princess in anything but name, Sinbad. In many ways I’m enjoying this humble existence.”

“You’ll always be a princess to me” Sinbad says jokingly, except it sounds a bit too earnest, and she looks vexed by his compliment. They smile at each other. Nala giggles.

“So what has my favourite sailor been up to?”

He sits down on her bed and tells her everything.

By the end of it she had handed him a cup of milk tea, and sipping on it while looking at her rearranging her hair, he finds, has calmed him down and made the rage inside his heart a little bit more bearable.

“You have lost so much, Sinbad. I am so sorry.”

Sinbad sighs, and looks at her resolute face.

“I’m sorry too. For all you have lost, and for all that I am responsible for as the cause of your pain.”

She takes his face with both her elegant hands, and sighs at him.

“Sinbad. There has been enough time for me to think, and I know now to tell you you mustn’t ever burden yourself thus. I miss my father dearly, but perhaps the fates ran their course. Please Sinbad, you are my friend now. I tell you as my father’s daughter you are not to blame for his death.”

He wants to protest, he does, but he loves the feeling of her fingers on his cheeks is too much, and he finds himself staring into her eyes. The shade of onyx. He can’t look away, and then, more than ever, he remembers her tentative kiss the day she left the Providence.

“Nala-“

She traces his lips with her fingers.

“I’ve thought of you”, she concedes, her voice a whisper. “Have you thought of me?”

She stares at him with defiance as she brings her face close to his. He can hear his heart racing as he brings his hands to her waist.

Their lips meet in a soft, mellow kiss that turns desperate within seconds.

After that he couldn’t have stopped if Lord Akbari himself came and forbid it. He slants his lips against her, and the kiss deepens as she opens her mouth to let him in. His arms find themselves wrapped around her waist, and her fingers thread through his hair, catching every snag along the way.

In the morning, he walks her to the girls’ school she built, and she embraces him tightly, bracketing his face with her hands again. They can’t kiss, for they are in public.

“We leave tomorrow morning.” He blurts out. As if it matters.

Nala takes his hand. “Come by after noon. I want to meet everyone else. It’s been so long since I saw them.” Nala says.

 

She smiles and hugs him once more, then walks away. He tries to turn and walk away too, but he can’t bring himself too. He stands, rooted in the spot she hugged him last, and watches Nala pick up a small child and swing him around, her hair swinging in an arc behind her.

 

When he takes her to the ship after her work for the day is done, Sinbad feels a pang in his chest watching her greeting everybody. She’d been a voice of reason, an embodiment of beauty and grace and everything good in this world amongst a band of thieves and hooligans, and now she was spreading her beauty amongst the least fortunate in Basra. Anwar speaks with her earnestly about the importance of education and health. Rina teases her about the land turning her into even more of a princess. Gunnar kisses her hand and bows his head at everything she says, a bit too shy. Cook tells her bluntly that she looks too thin, and perhaps she hasn’t learned how to cook for herself properly, and isn’t that a disgrace for a young woman her age. Nala defiantly proclaims she has no time, old man, and tells him that for someone who can cook so well, he doesn’t look an awful much like a woman to her. They all laugh. Sinbad’s smile reaches his eyes. Everything he cares about is on this ship, for now.

With a few final hugs and kisses, Nala has to leave. She smiles at him again, and they kiss like they’re drowning against the walls of her house, hidden under a Eucalyptus tree. She hears one of the midwives coming home, and reluctantly, Sinbad lets her go. Drinks her in.

“May peace be with you on this journey. God bless you, Sailor.” She says,

“And with you. Keep up this great work, Princess.”

He flees back to the ship before he thinks too much.

They sail at midday, the ship full of food and spices and mead, and the entire crew on board again. Basra is no longer home. The call of the sea is too high, and Rina whoops a little bit with joy when the anchor is pulled up.

“Fuck Basra!” she shouts, and Anwar laughs nervously at her.

Sinbad loves his travels, but he rubs at the small love bite on his neck, the one Nala gave him some time during their long night, how way her lips had bitten at his skin as her fingers wrapped around his manhood. He then realizes she’s left her mark in more ways than one, for threaded into a hole in his shirt is a green ribbon he’d seen in her hair last night.

He finds that he thinks of her everywhere and all the time. The endless horizon of blue sea reminds him of her long, lean legs, the way they went on for days and how they had felt wrapped around his shoulders, heels digging into his strong back as he pleasured her with his mouth, her little gasps fueling him on. The best feast he’d ever had. Her hair, braids fanned out on her expensive pillow, her eyes hooded and her mouth open as he gasped his prayers into her, his hands touching her all over and the feel of her, hot and tight around him. Her breasts, oh how he’d spent his time loving them with his tongue, and how she’s gasped out “Sinbad”, her accent stretching the vowels along with her pleasure. The sunrise on her skin, how peaceful she’d looked curled up next to him for that one kiss of dawn. The hour he’d enjoyed just looking at her through sleep-heavy eyes before she got up and put on her finery again.

He has to take a moment, several moments to himself when it’s too much. He’d screamed himself hoarse into her, and he is sure her midwife friends must have heard him, _Nala. Nala. Nala_. He thought of the weeks, months ahead when their paths would not cross.

“You look terribly, distracted, my friend” Anwar tells him at breakfast, two nights after they have left Basra. He attempts to wink.

Sinbad laughs at him and scoffs.

“Jut remembering old friends, Anwar.”


End file.
